Phone addiction and doomscrolling: why the feed will not let go
You picked up your phone “for a minute” — and surfaced forty minutes later. Not for lack of willpower: on the other side of the screen are the most skilled attention engineers in history, and the feed is designed never to end. Understanding the mechanics is the first step towards taking the wheel back.
- Lyudmila Chernysheva, psychologist and hypnotherapist
- Updated: September 27, 2026
Why it is so sticky
The feed works like a slot machine: the reward is unpredictable — sometimes boredom, sometimes something bright — and unpredictable reinforcement is exactly what produces the most persistent behaviour[1]. Doomscrolling adds a second hook: anxiety makes you monitor for threats, and the monitoring keeps turning up new ones — a loop familiar from the article on anxiety, only with the screen for fuel[2]. On top of that, the phone has become the all-purpose plaster for any kind of discomfort: awkward, bored, sad — and your hand is already reaching for it.
An honest test
The question is not “how many hours” — the screen-time figure is misleading, since work and maps are counted in it too. Three questions tell you more. Do you reach for your phone within five minutes of waking? Can you eat a meal without a screen? And when you realise you have left your phone at home, what do you feel — inconvenience, or anxiety?
What works
Friction rather than bans: move the feeds off your home screen, log out of your accounts (having to log back in is a small hurdle) and switch the screen to greyscale — a dull slot machine tugs at your sleeve less often[3]. Replace rather than simply remove: your hand is reaching not for the phone but away from discomfort, so give it somewhere else to go (water, the window, three breaths). Screen-free zones: the bedroom and the dinner table are sacrosanct[3] (the bedroom is covered in the article on bedtime anxiety). And keep putting something into your own life: the feed wins when it is more interesting than your evening — and that is a question for the evening, not only for the feed.
No diagnosis yet, but there is data
There is not yet a single agreed diagnosis of “smartphone addiction” in the classifications[1] — it is worth saying so plainly. For parents: among “screen” addictions, ICD-11 recognises only gaming disorder — addiction to video games. But there is more and more data linking compulsive use to anxiety and poor sleep in children and young people[4] — the mechanics resemble the anxiety loop. If anxiety lies behind the scrolling, the work needs to be with the anxiety, not only with the phone.
Sources
- Montag C., Lachmann B., Herrlich M., Zweig K. (2019). Addictive Features of Social Media/Messenger Platforms and Freemium Games against the Background of Psychological and Economic Theories. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(14):2612, DOI 10.3390/
ijerph16142612 - Sharma B., Lee S.S., Johnson B.K. (2022). The dark at the end of the tunnel: Doomscrolling on social media newsfeeds. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 3(1):144–156, DOI 10.1037/
tmb0000059 - Olson J.A., Sandra D.A., Chmoulevitch D., Raz A., Veissière S.P.L. (2022). A Nudge-Based Intervention to Reduce Problematic Smartphone Use: Randomised Controlled Trial. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 21(6):3842–3864 (published online 17 May 2022; issue 2023), DOI 10.1007/
s11469-022-00826-w - Sohn S.Y., Rees P., Wildridge B., Kalk N.J., Carter B. (2019). Prevalence of problematic smartphone usage and associated mental health outcomes amongst children and young people: a systematic review, meta-analysis and GRADE of the evidence. BMC Psychiatry, 19:356, DOI 10.1186/
s12888-019-2350-x
The limits of this article
This article is for information only: it does not replace a consultation or a doctor's help.
If you feel very bad right now — in Kazakhstan call 112 or 103; free round-the-clock psychological help — 1303 (Almaty).
If putting the phone away for the evening is no longer enough — it is worth looking at what strain, anxiety or loneliness the screen helps you not to notice.